Through interviews with teachers involved with The Open Source Development and Documentation Project (OSDDP) website and usability studies with non-users of open source, recommendations have been made for the OSDDP Guide. We are proposing the following recommendations: the need for links and descriptions of white papers and recommendation reports, simplification of the guide, inclusion of a page explaining the vernacular of the site, the assignment of the blank pages as project topics, and the incorporation of a client database.
The purpose for our group working on this project is to allow for maximum operability and usability of the OSDDP Guide for both experienced as well as inexperienced users. Currently, the OSDDP guide lacks several sections. In fact, some sections are completely blank. Through research, our goal is to offer ideas on how to modify the existing site by adding information that can further benefit OSDDP users. We have interviewed several students and instructors, both those involved in Professional Writing classes, as well as those who are not. This has allowed us to obtain a large range of data to help us form our ownrecommendations to improve the OSDDP Guide.
We began researching this topic by reviewing the existing OSDDP Guide. We each read through specific sections of the guide and both made suggestions on improvement and discussed what to add to the guide to make it more accessible to the user. The most significant problem that we encountered was the absence of information on many pages in the guide. Additionally, the pages that did include information were vague at best. For example, the guide does include a section with examples of well-written white papers; however, it lacks a description of what makes a good white paper.
The Professional Writing Online (PW Online), the online textbook used in English 420, served as a great way to review the OSDDP Guide because it provided us with examples of usability studies that were conducted by well-known organizations such as Microsoft and The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Also, one of the links on this website explained what the generally accepted format for usability studies is in the work place.
The most important research area of this project was conducting interviews with teachers and non-users of OSDDP to obtain feedback on the usability of the OSDDP Guide. We began this process by interviewing two professors in the Professional Writing Department at Purdue University, Jennie Blankert and Dr.Suzanne Black. These individuals assisted with the start of our research by providing us with information on how users felt about the current OSDDP Guide.
Dr. Black is a professor in the English Department who teaches English 420, a business writing course, and English 421, a technical writing course. In her 420 class, she encouraged students to post white papers to OSDDP but did not require it. She has personally contributed to the OSDDP Guide in that she was involved in the creation of the Mission Statement.
We explained our biggest concern to Dr. Black, the undeveloped pages. She agreed that they may frustrate users and might seem unprofessional. However, she thinks that more experienced users realize that these sections were created for the possible use as future projects for students, but agrees that it would be good to at least include an outline on each page.
Professor Black was very adamant about the importance of a client database being added to the guide to assist students in finding subjects for community service learning projects. Her basis for this would be to have various companies listed that would be willing to participate in such a project so that students can save a great deal of personal time searching for a subject. If a list were included on OSDDP, all that students would have to do is find a company that interests them, make the initial contact and go from there.
The OSDDP Guide's section on white papers was another concern of Professor Black's. In general, she has had more worries than complaints about white papers from her students. A good description of a white paper, as well as published white papers to serve as models, were some suggestions that she had about how to help students having trouble grasping the concept of a white paper. The description of white papers would not necessarily need to be in the guide itself, but a link to an outside source would be beneficial. She also felt that the current content of the section, which is a collection of examples that are regarded as superior white papers is helpful, but more information on white papers is needed.
The English 505 class here at Purdue allowed us to come in and interview them on their opinions and feelings concerning the OSDDP Guide. They were quite open and eager to answer any of the questions that we asked. Additionally, they offered a great deal of information on the OSDDP site in general. We asked this group essentially the same questions that we asked in our interview with Dr. Black, yet the responses that we received were different.
These individuals feel that the guide as a whole assumes too much from the students who are using it in the classroom. They feel as though the guide presumes that all students come from, not only a technical, but also a computer savvy background which is not the case for many individuals utilizing the OSDDP site within the classroom. In addition to students having to learn all the intricacies of a new site, the non user friendly language makes this struggle even more difficult. The pages are written for those who are already immersed within the OSDDP community, meaning those who are familiar with the “ins and outs” of the site as well as the guide. These users are also well versed in how to navigate the site themselves. This is not practical considering that many students who are unfamiliar with the site use it regularly for class.
During the interview, they stated that the best way to gauge how the guide needs to be fixed and changed is by placing yourself back to when you yourself were a new user to the OSDDP site. They suggested that you should ask yourself the following questions: What were some of the difficulties and struggles you had as a new user? What are some of the tips and examples that would have been beneficial in navigating the site? In doing this, more changes and recommendations can take place for those using the site for the first time.
One of the key issues that we inquired about during our interview centered on the blank pages in the guide. We believe that the pages were left blank in the hopes that a student would come along and decide to take on constructing the pages as an assignment. This has not happened, and there are several pages within the guide that have been continually left blank. We asked what they thought should happen to those pages, offering them such suggestions as putting up an “under construction” message or to dismantle the pages until there is content to post within them. Their consensus is that blank pages as well as the “under construction” signs are unprofessional in the business world, and since the goal of this class is to prepare students for the business world it is not a practical idea. One of the first questions that need to be answered is the reason why the pages have been left blank? If it is for pedagogical reasons, a disclaimer needs to be put up explaining why. But, if we are focusing more on the actual uses by students, then the guide needs to be changed to improve their accessibility to it. Additionally, they believe that the guide needs to explain how to use the OSDDP site, as well as its purposes; not as a place to show examples of students' work. This needs to be moved to another part on the site.
For our usability study, we interviewed individuals who had never seen or used the OSDDP Guide before. By interviewing these people, we felt that they would give us a truly objective indication of how usable the guide is to the average user. These are our findings:
Based on the research we have conducted throughout the course of this project, we have come to several conclusions that we believe will greatly improve the reliability as well as the usability of the OSDDP Guide. They are the following: